Many sales managers struggle to see what’s really happening. Of the approximately 100 million salespeople worldwide, more than 80% are thought to underperform. The problem is the lack of scalable coaching systems, according to Alberto Garagnani and Moritz Beck, co-founders of Zell, the AI startup automating sales management workflows.
Current tools do different jobs. CRMs like Salesforce track sales pipelines, and platforms like Gong and Chorus record and transcribe calls to create reports. Both give information, but neither helps teams act on it.
Zell aims to connect insights with real action. The company says it is an automated sales management tool that handles a sales manager’s daily tasks.
“The data is there. The tools are there. The problem is that no one actually acts on that data. We built Zell to close this gap: a system that doesn’t just analyse performance, but actively improves it,” says Garagnani.
Today, Zell announced a €500K in pre-seed funding to grow its AI sales management system. The platform identifies insights into sales performance and automatically turns them into coaching steps.
P3 Ventures, SkyDeck Europe, UC Berkeley SkyDeck, Lendlease, and Cariplo Factory co-led the funding round. Mamba Ventures and several international angel investors, such as Nicola Pivaro, Flavio Di Palo, Pietro Tansini, Thomas Hunziker, Gabriele Sidoti, and Ricardo Waller, also participated.
How Zell’s technology works
Zell’s platform reviews every sales call using its own analysis engine. This system looks for behavioural signals to create a real-time profile of each salesperson’s performance.
After analysing the calls, the system creates personalised coaching plans. These include AI role-play scenarios that target each person’s weak spots. Progress is tracked over time, so managers can support their team members in minutes instead of hours.
“We are building a system that executes the operational work of a sales manager, while leaving strategic control in the hands of the manager. The goal is to make scalable something that still relies too heavily on human effort,” says Beck.
Zell is joining a crowded and well-funded market. Gong, worth over $7 billion, leads in conversation intelligence. Salesloft and Outreach are top in sales engagement, while Mindtickle and Highspot are strong in sales enablement and readiness.
Zell and its investors believe that none of these platforms handles the execution loop. The startup identifies problems, proposes solutions, guides training, and tracks performance changes.
“Zell tackled one of the most persistent blind spots in B2B sales: the gap between what managers believe is happening in calls and what actually is. Through SkyDeck Europe, the team proved that AI-native coaching grounded in real behavioural data can move the needle where it matters – rep performance. This round confirms they’ve built something sales teams genuinely need,” comments Andrea Beretta, Senior Director, Startup Operations & Investments of Cariplo Factory.
What’s next for Zell
The new funding will help Zell improve its product, hire more engineers and sales staff, and enter new markets in Europe.
Looking ahead, Garagnani and Beck want to do more than just improve coaching. They hope to create a new kind of software that sits above CRM and conversation intelligence tools and manages the whole process of improving sales performance.
